The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie Tapa dura - 2001

JAMES S. SCOTT. Born and bred in western Scotland, he first worked as a cabin boy on a tramp steamer playing between Ayr and the Baltic. This gave him a bizarre introduction to the game of golf. The ship's captain, while in Scottish port, acquired buckets of damaged golf balls for a few pennies from urchins who scavenged them from Troon or Prestwick. At sea, one of Scott's duties was to tee up a succession of these balls on the foredeck--no easy task on a stormy day--so the "skipper" could work off his lunch by driving them into the northern seas. Later, successive exposures to farming, forestry, and fishing were followed by studying medicine. Training and experience were acquired in Glasgow, Dublin, West Africa, London, Liverpool, Chicago, Australia, and Florida. From 1961, he was Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Leeds University and, from 1986 until retirement, also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Then Herbert Warren Wind, at that time Golf Correspondent for The New Yorker, presented Scott with a copy of Alister MacKenzie's Golf Architecture and encouraged him to look into the life of the author, a Leed's graduate, famous in U.S. golfing circles but forgotten in his own "alma mater." He lives in Yorkshire, England.

RAYMUND M. HADDOCK is the stepgrandson of Alister MacKenzie. In 1994, he discovered a manuscript that his stepgrandfather had written in the early 1930s in which he related many of his thoughts about golf and golf course architecture. The book, entitles The Spirit of St. Andrews, was published a year later. A self-described "bogey golfer," Ray has played MacKenzie courses in England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and America. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.